Meet Condoleezza Rice

NRO has posted Jay Nordlinger’s prescient 1999 profile of Condoleezza Rice: “Star-in-waiting.” From Nordlinger we learn that the most influential teacher in Rice’s life was the father of…Madeleine Albright. I didn’t know that. We also learn this:

When it comes to Israel, Rice professes an emotional attachment, a pull that goes beyond the bounds of the coolly analytic. Israel, she says, “is a struggling democracy in the midst of non-democratic states that would do it great harm.” This was a nation that “nobody wanted to be born, that was born into a hostile environment, and that, without so strong a moral compass and so strong a people, might not have made it.” For the United States, Rice contends, Israel is no less than “a moral commitment.” “I’ve told you I’m a Realpolitiker, but this one is different.”

I hope events have not overtaken this statement or rendered it obsolete. We shall see.
Here’s Nordlinger’s 1999 prediction:

If she becomes secretary of state or even something lesser, she will be big. Rock-star big. A major cultural figure, adorning the bedroom walls of innumerable kids and the covers of innumerable magazines.